China Based Company In Clarksville Seeks More Taxpayer Money While Laying Off More Employees, Promising Expansion
Image Credit: Microvast Inc. / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
More Clarksville residents are without employment after China based electric vehicle battery producer Microvast announced more layoffs last week, all while still affirming their intentions of bringing their engineering and research-and-development departments to the area.
Microvast first announced plans to open their batter plant in Clarksville back in February 2021. They have begun to limit their production plan in order to obtain another $150 million in financing to complete the building of the plant, which is currently about halfway finished.
45 employees were already laid off on April 19, although the company stands by its promise to hire 230 people by 2025.
“We continue to focus on closing our Clarksville financing, while remaining committed to fulfilling planned customer and revenue growth,” a company official told Clarksville Now. “We are continually exploring additional customer sales opportunities in North America, including within the Canadian commercial vehicle market.”
Clarksville is not the only location to suffer from slowed production. The company has also lowered their employee numbers in Colorado and Florida, citing plans to relocate their assembly plant from Timnath, Colorado, and their R&D operations from Lake Mary, Florida, to the Clarksville location.
“Once project funding is established, our business consolidation in Clarksville will lead to further increases in the workforce. This additional workforce expands beyond production personnel to include incremental engineering and R&D employees that were not originally planned for the Clarksville location,” the official stated.
Microvast says they have contracts in place with “approximately five key customers” who are ready to do business with them as soon as the plant gets production underway.
The company has already received taxpayer money and incentives to assist with the building of the plant. In 2022, they were expected to receive $200 million in federal grant money, but an inquiry into their ties with the Chinese government led the U.S. Energy Department to opt not to award that money to them.
Josh Ward, Vice President of Industrial Development with the Clarksville-Montgomery County Economic Development Council, says that Microvast hired prematurely for the anticipated opening of the plant and that they expect to fill the positions again when the plant is finally completed.
We should not give them another dime, and Tennessee should seize all their assets, until they give the money back. Anyone who thinks the CCP has any decency what so ever, is a fool.
You don’t know shit buddy. ^^
This article is trash and whoever wrote it doesn’t not shit about the company
Exactly! We don’t want biting to do with a CommunuT country who installed our unelected current admin that is destroying our great country. Protest this evil China company and not one more penny to the commies!
More propaganda shit from the right to short the stock. You guys are merciless. The company won’t go bankrupt give it up already. Asian and Eu business will sustain US operations.
It’s no wonder the left call yall racist.
Do research and you’ll find that they’re based in Texas but manufactures in China. It’s not the companies fault for the slow adoption of EV in American. You think your smartphone and car parts are made here in America, wrong answer! They had to take there battery technology to China and the rest of the world because we weren’t forward thinking enough. Elon is in bed with CCP you moron more than Microvast.
Do research and you’ll find that they’re based in Texas but manufactures in China. It’s not the companies fault for the slow adoption of EV in American. You think your smartphone and car parts are made here in America, wrong answer! They had to take there battery technology to China and the rest of the world because we weren’t forward thinking enough.
Microvast has been based in Houston Texas since 2006, with Battery plants in Germany and China, is that any different than Apple or many other US companies based here, with factories in China! They were trying to bring a factory to the US, hired any USA Veteran’s in Tennessee, R&D in Florida and were going to build Battery Storage for products in Calorado. Yes, they were going to get a 200 Million grant to build a second factory in Kentucky, to build their superior safety separator product, in a joint project with General Motors! That was scraped because of the Political attack by a few Senators, trying to protect their big oil supporters in their states, ALL Political. Sad that we need tons of Batteries now and Microvast was planning to do just that, but has been attacked trying to bring jobs back to the USA!
Poor article with little research on Microvast. Tennessee can thank the republicans who are in bed with the oil industry, and Jane St Crapital for the hit piece.
Sure, the company manufactures in China.. big deal. More than half of their sales are in other countries, and many other public companies manufacture there too. The US just likes to pretend green energy is underway while exclaiming manufacturing is coming back to the states.
The tennesseconservativenews is not a real news source. This is just biased, xenophobic trash spilling from some idiot far right wannabe who kisses his cousin and claims his Christian.
Once again, we are shooting ourselves in the foot: Microvast was bringing high tech manufacturing jobs TO America at great expense. The GOP is in effect handing the 21st century to China by attacking companies trying to set up shop in the US. Microvast is an American company that currently manufactures in China and Europe. Having them create jobs in the US would be a win for us. This is short-sighted.
If any of you actually research the lithium battery industry from the ground to it’s usage, and just as importantly, it’s disposal at ‘end of life’, you’ll learn it’s much like the nuclear power industry. The environmental damage done in the mining alone makes it unsustainable. The EV’s are comparable to a semi for the road damage they cause. Then buying tires every less than fifteen thousand miles to add more environmental damage makes little sense to me. Then there’s the, hopefully, rare crash of these things and a whole new firefighting and hazmat technique is being developed. When the lithium industry talks about recycling the batteries, it all in generalities, i.e. we can do this, technology will increase the recycling usage, yada, yada, yada. Sounds a lot like the nuclear industry promises of seventy years age and to date, all they’ve come up with is poisoning a vast underground salt mine for hundreds of thousands of years. Oil and gas are not the best or, in the long term, the solution but think several times before you hang your hats on battery power. When you do, IMAO, you’ll not be so concerned about a Chinese run company and concentrate on truly sustainable ways for our world.
I’d say TCN really hit a nerve with the left in TN. EV’s are a dying industry yet taxpayers should be doling out dollars to a company that has already reneged on it’s agreement with the state. It isn’t the state of TN to be choosing winners or losers with tax dollars. As far as I’m concerned this corporate welfare should be ended in total.
This article from the Tennessee conservative is full of misrepresentations and self-defeating deceit. Here is another article from Tennessee that is more truthful. This company (Microvast) is FROM TEXAS and has been around for many years. They have invested tens of millions in Tennessee and continue to do so!! A few far-right congressmen stopped the promised federal grant to help Microvast BUILD THEIR PLANT in TENNESSEE due to their usual bizarre conspiracy theory garbage that it is a “secret Chinese company” or the like. But MICROVAST continues to be dedicated to building in Tennessee anyway!! They simply had to slow progress of the massive plant due to the loss of the promised grant money. Microvast is an established international leader in electric batteries for commercial uses (not cars but industry and large vehicles!) and will be able to finish the plant – just slower due to these ignorant far-right congressmen who live in an alternate reality. Tennessee will benefit despite these idiot congressmen. Oh – and MICROVAST is moving their other US operations guess where…..to TENNESSEE!!
https://clarksvillenow.com/local/microvast-lays-off-more-employees-but-plans-to-move-engineering-rd-to-clarksville/